How to get the most from your employee survey data

cultureemployee survey
8 February 20218 February 2021

I think most of us understand that good communication is vital to every work or personal relationship.

If there’s a problem most people put it down to communication believing everything would be so much better if we could only ‘communicate’.

So you probably won’t be surprised when I tell you it’s unusual for me to do an employee survey where at least one aspect of communication isn’t rated poorly.  You may however be surprised that communication isn’t often the cause of their problems.

In my experience what people describe as a com­munication issue in an employee survey is often a symptom of something else.  And that unfortunately means if you focus on just resolving the communication issue you probably won’t get the improvements you need or want.

Don’t assume your survey data and charts will tell you everything.

To get the most from your survey you need to look past the graphs and charts – you need to get behind the data to understand what it really means.

That’s the bit I find so fascinating about employee surveys, and the bit I really love about doing them – they can tell a really rich story and uncover things you may not expect!

You don’t have to be a data geek to uncover a story worth telling – here’s the essentials I recommend:

  • Start with the questions in your survey. What is it you want your survey to tell you. Make your questions give you the information you need and can actually do something with.
  • Identify correlations, patterns and trends.
  • Explore and test interesting relationships to generate possible ‘answers’
  • Analyse any qualitative feedback to identify differences and opportunities to add depth and flavour to the quantitative data you collect.
  • Give yourself permission to be curious and pose questions, to yourself and others that you wouldn’t normally think of
  • Remember your survey is the first stage to achieving your overall goals. It doesn’t need an ending but it does need to provide a link to the next ‘chapter’

I hope this is useful – if you’d like more information about our survey products and services please get in touch.